With hard seltzers becoming all the rage last summer, it was only a matter of time before something else came along with their eye on the throne.
While I don’t think Loverboy Sparkling Hard Tea is anywhere near the popularity of the hard seltzers, if you asked my wife, she’d never drink any other alcoholic beverage ever again.
Apparently the Loverboy company was created by two cast mates on the Bravo show “Summer House“, which I have never seen, or heard of, but from what I can gather it sounds a lot like Jersey Shore.
Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula started the company and began promoting it on the show, which has lead to the drinks being available in over 40 states, and it’s popularity to skyrocket over the past few months.
Loverboy is a sparkling hard tea that uses natural ingredients to give it sweetness and flavor that you don’t really find with the hard seltzers. And of course, the base of the drink is tea, instead of seltzer, so that changes the flavor profile a bit. If you’re not into tea, you may not like these alcoholic drinks.
However, before you run off to the store to try and find the three flavors of sparkling hard teas, unless you’re in certain states, you may be out of luck.
Where Can You Buy Loverboy Sparkling Hard Tea?
While the Loverboy brand is available in 40 states, there are currently only three states in which you can buy the Loverboy Sparkling Hard Teas.
Wisconsin, New York, and Massachusetts
The Loverboy brand also offers a drink called Loverboy Spritz, which is more widely available, but unfortunately the teas are currently only available in the above three states.
Thankfully for me, I live not too far from the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, so these sparkling hard teas are pretty accessible even though they don’t sell them in Illinois.
It’s not unheard of for people from northern Illinois to make the drive just over the border into Wisconsin just for alcohol. The New Glarus Brewery in Wisconsin has been brewing an extremely popular beer called Spotted Cow for years that Illinois residents purchase in bulk all the time to bring back home. So driving over the border for some hard tea wasn’t too much of a stretch.
Our Wisconsin Adventure to Find Loverboy
My cousin had made the trek a few weeks ago ago and brought back quite a haul of Loverboy’s and gave a few to my wife to try, which she instantly fell in love with. So one Saturday, a couple weeks ago, she asked if I wanted to throw the kids in the car and drive up to Kenosha to see if we could fill the car with them to bring back.
With nothing else to do since COVID-19 is keeping us all at home (for the most part), I figured why not. The kids hadn’t been on a car ride in a while, I haven’t driven anywhere that wasn’t 5 minutes from home (the grocery store and the post office), so it sounded like a nice little road trip to give us something to do.
The kids were super excited because we told them we were going a roadtrip, but I don’t think they realized they weren’t even going to get out of their car seats.
The first place we stopped was Woodman’s, which is just over the Wisconsin/Illinois border in Kenosha, and right off the highway. It seemed like the place to go for Illinois residents trying to stock up on New Glarus beer, since every cart in the place was filled to the top with Spotted Cow.
And of course they were sold out of all Loverboy flavors except one, so my wife bought the last 4 cases they had of that flavor and we set out for another location.
Using the map on the Loverboy website, we found a Piggly Wiggly about 5 miles from the Woodman’s that sold Loverboy, so we made our way over there hoping that since it wasn’t right off the highway, it would have more in stock.
And it did!
We ended up buying 5 cases (6-packs) of each of the three flavors, so 90 cans of alcohol, and considered our adventure a success as we drove back home.
We split up a bunch of the cases and put together a few variety packs for our friends and family and then filled the fridge.
Loverboy Sparkling Hard Tea Flavors – Review
I’m going to be honest up front, I’m not a tea drinker. So these are definitely not my…. cup of tea… but since my wife was the one that wanted them, and has been drinking them constantly since we got them, I’m going to give you both of our impressions of each of the flavors so that you can make up your own minds.
If you like tea, then you’ll probably agree more with my wife’s analysis, and if you’re not a tea person, or your picky when it comes to everything related to food and drink, then you’ll probably agree with me. But I felt it was only fair to have someone else give their opinion since mine isn’t always very favorable.
So with that said, let’s take a look at the different flavors of Loverboy Sparkling Hard Tea and how each of us liked them.
Hibiscus Pom with Lime
This was probably my favorite of the three Loverboy hard teas. It seems to have the most flavor and tastes different than the other two, which are very similar in my opinion. My wife put this flavor as her 2nd choice overall. She likes it way better than the White Peach Tea flavor, but not quite as much as the lemon flavor.
She said that the White Peach Tea and Lemon Iced Tea were pretty similar in overall taste, while the Pomegranate flavor was very different than those two, which is why she likes it so much. I would have to agree with her on that one. There’s a lot more flavor in the Hibiscus Pom with Lime than the other two flavors, overall, but I’m still not a fan of iced tea, so I’m still going to choose a hard seltzer over even the best flavor of Loverboy.
White Peach Tea with Lavender
This flavor was both of our least favorite flavor out of the three options. I’m not really a fan of peach, or tea, in general, so it wasn’t a surprise that I wasn’t a fan of this. It still has that tea-ish aftertaste that they all have, but the peach just didn’t do anything for me. My wife thinks that it’s just to similar to the lemon with ginger flavor, and she’d much rather drink the lemon one. It’s just a bit too light on the flavor… although that’s what my wife likes about these drinks in general, is that they are very light, don’t use any artificial sweeteners and have a low calorie/sugar count.
It surprised me a little that she wasn’t a huge fan of the white peach flavor, since she absolutely loves peaches, but I think it was just her least favorite of the three options. It’s not bad, but she would choose the other ones if there was a choice. Me, I would drink anything else if given the choice, these are not my favorite drinks.
Lemon Iced Tea with Ginger
Again, not my choice of drink, so I was not a fan of the lemon iced tea flavor either. I don’t like lemon iced tea when it doesn’t have alcohol in it, so just adding alcohol to it isn’t going to change anything for me. This one definitely seemed to have more of the “tea” flavor than the other ones, so that turned me off right from the jump. However, this is my wife’s favorite flavor of the three… but she enjoys tea.
It’s lighter than the Hibiscus Pom flavor, and tastes better than the peach, so she saw those all as wins in her book. I think it’s probably the safest bet when it comes to flavor, because it’s basically your traditional hard iced tea. So if you’re a fan of normal iced tea, then you’ll probably like this Lemon Iced Tea with Ginger flavor the best.
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So there you have it. My wife absolutely loves these things, while I was a little indifferent to them. They aren’t quite as appealing to me as the hard seltzers out there, but that’s probably because I’m not a fan of tea.
If you’re looking for an alternative to the White Claws and the Trulys this summer, Loverboy is probably a solid option.
Each can is only 90 calories with 0 grams of sugar, so they are a little “healthier” than the hard seltzers, but since they contain tea, I’m guessing they have caffeine, which the other beverages don’t, although I can’t find anywhere on the can that says anything about caffeine, so I could be completely wrong about that.
Have you had the Loverboy Sparkling Hard Teas? What did you think? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear your opinions.
Hi Tom,
I just started a Keto diet, and I’m trying to find an alcohol that taste good and keeps me on the diet. I tried white Claw and Trulys and did not care for them. I was reluctant to spend more more trying other kinds. My daughter saw these in a store in MA, and I did a little research and came across your review. Based on our wife liking them more than the seltzers and likes ice tea, I’m going back tonight to get some. I’ll let you know.
Thanks,
Michelle
Definitely let me know what you think. They aren’t my personal favorite, but yeah, my wife loves them. We were actually in Wisconsin last week again and she had to buy even more of them before we came home.